Hainer Hill

Hainer Hill at work (around 1956)

Hainer Hill (* 28 July 1913 as Henry Hill in Eberstadt , today Darmstadt belonging; † 20th August 2001 in Karlsruhe ) was a German stage and costume designer , painter , graphic artist and photographer .

life and work

1913-1945

Heinrich Hill, who was only called Hainer at an early age, was born on July 28, 1913 in Eberstadt, which was still independent at the time, which is now the southernmost district of Darmstadt. His mother was a seamstress , his father a decorative painter . He attended elementary school from 1919 to 1927. Then he began an apprenticeship as a painter in the Darmstadt company where his father was also employed. At the same time, he took a course for decorative painting at the municipal trade school in Darmstadt, graduating as a journeyman. He continued his education in 1931 at the State School for Arts and Crafts in the specialist class for free and applied painting in Mainz with Richard Throll . His goal was to become a freelance painter. He received his diploma in May 1935. Numerous watercolors , drawings , gouaches and oil paintings were created during the student years . He then worked briefly as an assistant to Ludwig Sievert, the head of equipment at the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt am Main . In December 1935 he enrolled at the Städel'sche Kunstschule and in 1936 he became a master student for two semesters with the former set designer at the Hessian State Theater in Darmstadt , Franz Karl Delavilla , in the class for free graphics. In addition to the refinement of his arts, he learned etching and drypoint etching , techniques that were helpful for his own set projection painting. For him, this art meant, above all, a fundamental examination of light, its power of transformation, its effect on geometry, the tectonics of space and its interaction with the dynamics of music. Hill, who had met the set designer Caspar Neher during his work , carried out the projections according to his specifications. The collaboration extended to many productions in Frankfurt am Main, Darmstadt, Hamburg, Glyndebourne, Berlin and Vienna. Between 1936 and 1951, Hill produced, in addition to his own work, the projections for over 34 sets for Caspar Neher. Starting from a guest performance with the ensemble of the German theater , he accepted a position as a set designer at the Reichsgautheater in Posen from 1940 to 1942 . He then moved to the Reussian Theater in Gera until 1944 . Königsberg was his next stop in 1944. The war events caught up with him in September of that year and he had to dig trenches, complete brief military training and participate in the war as a newsman for the Bavarian tank division. As a prisoner of war, he had to work hard physically in an aluminum factory as well as in road and track construction and take part in anti-fascist training courses. In addition, he organized theater performances and painted watercolors and drawings of typical Russian houses, landscapes and cities; some of them he could exchange for food.

1945–1961

After his return home, Hainer Hill was employed as a set designer at the Gera Municipal Theaters and then at the Schauspielhaus in Leipzig . It was here that he met Bertolt Brecht in 1950 and finally went to Berlin at the end of the season. From 1950 to 1953 he worked at the Berliner Ensemble as a set designer and assistant director with Brecht himself, as well as with Therese Giehse , Benno Besson and Egon Monk . In the process, the Brecht ensemble also got to know the achievement of sophisticated projection technology that only Hill could master and that deeply impressed the critic Friedrich Luft as well as the playwright Heiner Müller . The collectively organized work processes at the BE did not provide for a strict separation of the individual work areas and gave employees the opportunity to do additional work of their own. This is how Hainer Hill came to theater photography . Hundreds of photos were taken, e. B. von Mutter Courage , Urfaust , Don Juan , Frau Carrar's rifles , The Caucasian Chalk Circle , which contrast with the static total views of Ruth Berlau's stage as lively snapshots . He also worked as a guest in Berlin for the Schillertheater , the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and the Komische Oper as well as in Hamburg at the State Opera and again on the stages of the city of Frankfurt am Main. In 1953 Hill was enticed to work as head of equipment and first stage designer at the German State Opera Berlin . Initially, the game was played in the alternative Admiralspalast . In 1954 he moved to West Berlin , which later enabled him to work on international stages. On December 14, 1955, shortly after the opening of the Linden Opera, Alban Berg's Wozzeck (conductor: Johannes Schüler , director: Werner Kelch) was performed there. There were concerns that the twelve-tone music must appear alien to the audience , but it was thanks to Hill's visual ingenuity that it became a success. He designed a clear, very strictly geometrical stage concept with projected street fronts, house facades, barracks walls that run endlessly towards the rear. The production, which was highly praised by the international press, saw a total of 55 performances, was seen in guest appearances in Spain and France and was included again in the program in 1965 on the 40th anniversary of the premiere , again conducted by Johannes Schüler. In addition to several classics such as Elektra or Orpheus and Eurydice , other works of moderate modernity were gradually added to the repertoire: Prince Igor and The Auditor as the best-known, but also Tai Yang awakened by Jean Kurt Forest or Mussorgski's Chowanschtschina . In the following years, Hill's projections became more and more important as a scenic means of design, as they enabled transformations with the means of light, interesting transitions, special depth effects as well as rapid scene changes as a kind of optical reconstruction . The Reiche & Vogel company supplied the specially developed lighting technology for stages at home and abroad. In 1959 Hill headed the Master class for projection painting in Bayreuth . For Easter 1960 in Palermo at the Teatro Massimo he designed the projections for the first scenic performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Europe under the conductor Hermann Scherchen , with whom he had been in artistic exchange since 1952. He was also interested in the technique of a highly abstract projection as he used it in his Wagner sets, also for foreign invitations, as a means of stylization .

1961-2001

The construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 meant a career break, as Hill was one of those who lived in the west while his place of work was in the east. All of the positions in question in West Berlin were filled, which is why he took on assignments all over the world as a freelancer over the next few months, taking with him a 44 kg transportable stage design workshop. A highlight of the 1961 season was the Ring des Nibelungen in the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma , valued by the press as a cultural and political renewal in Germany because of the "scenic clearing out". First at the end of 1962 as a guest engagement, then from 1963 on with a permanent contract, the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe was his place of work. Here, starting with Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame in December 1962, he created the sets for 27 theater and opera productions in an interim theater and then went from 1967 to 1976 as head of equipment and first stage designer at the new house of the Dortmund Theater . His project partners from the field of music included Wilhelm Schüchter , Werner Egk , Hans Wallat and Marek Janowski , from the field of direction Hans Hartleb , Paul Hager , Jan Biczycki and Karl Paryla . He was involved in a total of 45 stage design developments, including the premiere of the opera Eli by Walter Steffens . In 1977 there was one last collaboration with Harry Buckwitz at the Schauspielhaus Zürich ( Schweyk during World War II with Helmut Lohner and Christiane Hörbiger in the leading roles), after which he only worked occasionally as a freelance set designer, increasingly devoting himself to drafts and drawings.

Hainer Hill died on August 20, 2001 in Karlsruhe. Hill's professional motto is affixed to the grave: “The soul of the stage space is the light. It gives the viewer's imagination the necessary orientation. ”His estate is in the Deutsches Theatermuseum Munich (mainly stage designs, figurines and written material), in the Bertolt Brecht archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin (mainly photo negatives and positive prints by the Brechtian Ensembles) and in the General State Archive Karlsruhe (especially drawings and other early works).

Parade discipline projection

Hainer Hill has decisively developed the stage wall decoration by means of projection. His designs met with broad recognition, only occasionally (from a socialist point of view) were accused of gloom and formalism . In 1952 the Berliner Zeitung wrote about Hill's style and method of working: “In his projections, Hainer Hill uses the contrast between graphic and painterly effects. He subordinates one to the other, contrasts the drawn and constructive with the colorful and painterly. On the glass plates, 18X18 cm, he works with many techniques: drypoint, pen drawing, watercolor, aquatint , photography and montage . The strong, almost 200-fold enlargement results in such a rich expression on the stage background that can never be achieved with painted brochures . ”The main author of the Hill biography published in 2005, Dirk Praller, concludes with an appreciation of the projection work:“ His universal artistic His training, his technical adeptness and the accuracy of the old masters are a reason for the astonishing range of his possibilities of expression, for his gift of actually being able to clearly illustrate his own concepts and aesthetic intentions [...]. Hainer Hill's projection painting shows - in the smallest of spaces, so to speak - what defines the work of the stage designer: it is an art that is technically and handcrafted to a high degree, it is never an end in itself, but nevertheless directly transmits the strong and unmistakable handwriting and the typical - measured and never triumphant - color scheme of this set designer in the stage area. "

Preserved stage and costume designs (selection)

• 1950: Florian Geyer - 3 stage designs, 10 sheet figurines (Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, artistic director: Fritz Wisten , director: Lothar Müthel )
• 1955: Iphigenie in Aulis - 4 stage designs, 31 sheet figurines, 4 designs for shoes, shields, hairstyles (Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, conductor: Hans Löwlein, director: Carl-Heinrich Kreith)
• 1961: Peer Gynt - 14 stage designs, 25 sheets of figurines, 1 draft of masks, 1 draft of props "Pig" (Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, conductor: Horst Stein , director: Erich-Alexander Winds )
• 1967–1976: Wagner operas Lohengrin , Tristan and Isolde , Die Walküre , Das Rheingold , Götterdämmerung , Siegfried - extensive drafts of stage sets, figurines, props (Städtische Bühnen Dortmund)
• 1968: Der Frieden - 17 stage designs, 24 sheets of figurines, detailed drafts for clothes, hairstyles, animals, scenes (Städtische Bühnen Dortmund, musical direction: Glen Buschmann , director: Karl Paryla)

Photo series (selection)

• 1949–1961: Mother Courage and her children - negative films, positive prints; Photos of scenes (Berliner Ensemble, first in the Deutsches Theater, then in the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm)
• 1950: Mrs. Carrar's rifles - negative films, positive prints; Stage photos, set photos (Berliner Ensemble in the Deutsches Theater)
• 1952: The Broken Jug - negative films, positive prints; Stage photos, set photos (Berliner Ensemble in the Deutsches Theater)
• 1952: Urfaust - negative films, positive prints; Stage photos, set photos (Berliner Ensemble in the Schloßtheater Potsdam)
• 1954: The Caucasian Chalk Circle - negative films, positive prints; Photos of scenes (Berliner Ensemble in the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm)

Filmography (selection)

• 1938: Painter for various productions of Tobis film art
• 1966: The Pendulum (TV movie)

Solo exhibitions (selection)

• 1942: Stage design and landscape (Reichsgautheater Posen)
• 1975: Hainer Hill - stage designs, figurines, working models, projection paintings (Städtische Bühnen Dortmund)
• 1984: Set designs by Hainer Hill for works by Richard Wagner (Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe)
• 1996: Watercolors and drawings from wartime and imprisonment 1944–1948 (Käthe-Kollwitz-Saal, Karlsruhe-Durlach)
• 2000: Pictures from the early 30s (Kronberg Gallery, Kronberg im Taunus)

Participation in exhibitions (selection)

• 1955: European theater exhibition 1955 ( Burgtheater , Vienna)
• 1959: Stage sets from 1945–1958 ( German Academy of the Arts Berlin )
• 1961: Brecht's work in contemporary stage design (German Academy of the Arts Berlin)
• 1967, 1971, 1975 various stage design exhibitions (Prager Quadrinale, Prague)
• 1971: Werner Egk - the stage work ( Deutsches Theatermuseum , Munich)

literature

• Mrs. Carrar's rifles . With 22 photos from the performance by the Berliner Ensemble. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1961 (photos by Hainer Hill and Percy Paukschta).
• Käthe Flamm: Hainer Hill, the set designer . In: Cultural Office of the City of Dortmund (ed.): Here. Dortmund cultural work. Review . 31 or 32. Wulff & Co., Dortmund 1974, p. 22-25 .
• Ingvelde Geleng: master of projection. Hainer Hill's contribution to contemporary stage design . In: Cultural Office of the City of Dortmund (ed.): Here. Dortmund cultural work. Review . 31 or 32. Wulff & Co., Dortmund 1974, p. 26-28 .
• Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 .
• Lothar Schirmer: Bertolt Brecht and Caspar Neher . In: Museum Pedagogical Service Berlin (ed.): Museum journal. Reports from museums, castles and collections in Berlin and Potsdam (=  Berlin museums ). 6th episode, no. I , January 1998, ISSN  0933-0593 , p. 35-36 (therein Hainer Hill).

Web links

• Hainer Hill Archive in the Archive of the Academy of Arts, Berlin

Individual evidence

1. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , "A true capable person on the way to positive utility ..." - Hainer Hills Youth and Training, p. 11–12 (supplemented by the tabular chapter “Biography”, p. 251).
2. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , Ludwig Sievert and the stage design of the time, p. 12-13 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , From master student to "Master of projection", p. 17-21 .
4. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , work makes work / "Let me show people that you can do something." - Hainer Hills projections for the Deutsche Theater Berlin, p. 21-25 .
5. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , work stations. Poznan 1940–1942, pp. 25-26 .
6. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , Gera 1942–1944, pp. 26-27 .
7. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , War instead of theater - Königsberg 1944, p. 27 .
8. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , prisoner of war, p. 27–28 (supplemented by the tabular chapter “Biography”, p. 251).
9. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , Return and New Beginning - Gera 1948 / "Brecht am Apparat" - Leipzig 1949/50 / "The no longer too young man must finally have a so-called spiritual home." Hainer Hill at the Berliner Ensemble / Das Berliner Ensemble / "The picture is never realistic, the stage is always realistic." - Set designer at BE, p. 28–32 (supplemented by the chapter “Catalog raisonné”, p. 231 ff).
10. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , The rule and the exception - Photography am BE, p. 32–34 (supplemented by the following chapters as well as the illustrated part and catalog raisonné).
11. ^ ^{A b} Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , "Hill is what every stage needs: a fanatical worker, obsessed with his job ..." - Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin 1953–1961, p. 42–51 (see also part of illustration pp. 102–107).
12. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , "Hill is what every stage needs: a fanatical worker, obsessed with his job ..." - Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin 1953–1961, p. 42-51 (see also fig. P. 112-115, 118-119, 132-136).
13. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , guest performances, p. 51-52 .
14. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , "Frei schaffend", p. 52-53 .
15. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , Theater im Provisorium - Karlsruhe 1963–1967 / Dortmund 1967–1976, pp. 54–61 (supplemented by the chapters “Catalog raisonné” and “Biography”).
16. ↑ AHB: Hainer Hill . In: Berliner Zeitung . No. 189/1952 , August 15, 1952, the portrait.
17. ^ Lothar Schirmer, Dirk Praller: stage pictures. Hainer Hill and the art of projection . Ed .: Thomas Lindemann (=  Lindemanns library . Volume 26 ). Info Verlag, Karlsruhe 2005, ISBN 3-88190-415-8 , Once again the projection, p. 64-65 .